PureView

Microsoft may have killed off its Windows Phone flagship but there are two new phones waiting in the wings for imminent release, it's said, including one unofficially dubbed a "selfie phone." The two handsets were shown off internally during a meeting at Microsoft, insiders claim, and are believed to be codenamed Superman and Tesla.

Microsoft and Canon have inked a new patent sharing deal, but before you yawn and roll over, the agreement could well make for even stronger PureView camera technology on future Windows Phones. The two firms have already joined forces on select R&D in the past, but the new collaboration covers "certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products" according to Microsoft.

Apple has hired Nokia's "camera expert" and one of the key members of the PureView team, Ari Partinen, presumably to help boost the photography skills of future iPhones. Partinen, who has worked on Nokia's camera technology since the Symbian days of the Nokia N8 will begin at Apple in June.

Nokia's new Lumia Icon may have fairly distinctive looks, but it's what it hears that the Finnish firm is most proud of. The phone's PureView camera system introduces what Nokia is calling "directional audio" recording, which uses twin microphones on the rear of the Verizon exclusive to focus what sound is picked up and what gets ignored. Nokia is so excited by it, it even put it up against an Android best-seller to show the difference; see the demos after the cut.

Verizon has refilled its Windows Phone flagship spot, with the Nokia Lumia Icon distilling what we liked from the Lumia 1520 into a 5-inch form-factor with a crisp metal chassis and 20-megapixel PureView. Fronted by a 5-inch, 1080p Full HD OLED ClearBlack display, and running Windows Phone 8 on Qualcomm's 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 quadcore, what the Lumia Icon is particularly focusing on is video recording quality, both in terms of image thanks to the oversampling and lossless zoom of PureView, and a more impressive soundtrack with directional audio recording. Check out our first impressions after the cut.

Nokia has begun teasing its latest device, promising something with an emphasis on audio quality that will be revealed soon. The clip - which opens with the tagline "Have you heard what's coming?" and then promises that soon Nokia fans will be able to "See and hear what you've been missing", over a backing track of engine and race-car noises - gives no real indication of what device it might be referring to, though some are suggesting it may be for the much-rumored Nokia Lumia 929 Icon with Rich Recording.

You're to blame for the vast Nokia Lumia 1520. "Make a phablet" we kept asking Nokia, "give us a big Windows Phone to compete with the Galaxy Note." That Nokia - and Microsoft - went off to the drawing board and returned with a hand-dominating 6-inch monster is a juicy sort of irony, then: this is a Lumia that not only comes in larger than just about every other smartphone on the market, it could be considered a small tablet in its own right. Problem is, there's a difference between a big phone and a great one, so has Nokia done more than enlarge Lumia? Read on for our full review.

You asked for a big Windows Phone, and Nokia is delivering just that with the Lumia 1520. Headed to AT&T imminently, the 6-inch phablet not only bears the biggest screen on a recent Nokia, but the fastest processor ever inside a Windows Phone, the highest display resolution, and what's arguably the most rational compromise of camera quality in the company's well-esteemed PureView system. With review units only released late last week, we're still getting to grips with the Lumia 1520's charms, but there's still time for some first-impressions of how this new flagship measures up.

Nokia's new flagship Lumia 1520 is big news and a big phone. The company's first "phablet" Windows Phone, it marks the debut of official 1080p screen support in version 8.1 of Microsoft's platform, not to mention a further distillation of Nokia's investment into PureView camera technology down into the mass market. It's also the device that Nokia hopes will rival top-tier iPhone and Android handsets that, so far, it has struggled to compete with. Plenty of high expectations, then, but does the Lumia 1520 live up to them? Read on for our first impressions.